Phone It In

As with any outdoor gear, the best equipment is the kind you have in hand when you need it. Advancements in the quality of the cameras found in every smartphone model have made them nearly equal to professional tools. With patience, knowledge, and practice, any outdoor enthusiast can take photos of a quality once reserved to the pages of the best outdoor print publications. There’s much more to professional photography than quality gear, but many professional techniques can be quickly adopted to good effect. The cameras built into current smartphones capture images at resolutions exceeding any found in professional gear only a few years ago. Their users only need to add certain knowledge to see their photos take a giant step forward.

Proportion Matters
Good outdoor photos come together with a blending of composition and light. For the first, it’s hard to go wrong following the rule of thirds. This rule says an image should be divided into nine equal parts by four equally-spaced, imaginary lines, two vertical and two horizontal, and that key elements should be placed to fall along these lines. In a photo of a sunset, for example, the horizon should be either at the lower horizontal line or the upper and not outside or in between. There’s a great deal of mathematic and scientific theory behind why we find this appealing, but it’s almost universally so. Once you see a photo that doesn’t conform to this theory adjusted so that it does, it’s striking how much more visually pleasing it becomes. Many phone cameras display this grid to the user, either in the actual photo mode, editing mode or both. Try resizing your photos to place a horizon along the bottom line and the person or other subject along the left or right line, and you’ll be amazed at the result. The rule of thirds is a general guideline, not an absolute mandate. Subjects in outdoor settings don’t always line adhere to straight lines, but if you compose and edit your photos in that general direction, you’ll be pleased with the result.

Move It, Don’t Zoom It
The chief point at which phone cameras fall short of professional gear is in their gathering of light. Generally, the small, built-in lens is the only one you’ve got. The challenge becomes adjusting what you can to make your photos the best they can be, but thankfully, there’s usually a great deal of room to maneuver here. Move relative to your subject to get your desired composition, and never use digital zoom. Daytime outdoor photos take advantage of the sun, and its position relative to your subject should always be the first consideration.

Be Creative With Lighting
To light the subject, the sun should be behind the photographer but not necessarily directly behind. If you want the subject looking at or toward the camera, try
shooting with the sun at a 45-degree angle to the subject. That should eliminate any tendency for them to squint, and it will also add more detail to their face. Nighttime outdoor photos are a challenge because the flash function on most phone cameras is purely dissatisfactory. Happily, though, nearly any light source will do. Turn the flash function off in your phone camera and light the subject with a flashlight, a vehicle’s headlights, a campfire or almost any other illumination source, and you’ll be surprised at the images you can create.